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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Design and Analysis
From:       Irwin K <emerald-arcana () rogers ! com>
Date:       2002-06-29 5:27:05
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On Friday 28 June 2002 05:05 pm, Simon Edwards wrote:

> I think that right now design is the most important Usability related task
> that should be done in KDE. Most of KDE was not designed by people with
> knowledge of usability, user interface or interaction design, hence things
> suck in many ways. There is not much point in testing things that we
> already know to suck.  It's a better idea to go through KDE and find the
> most important parts, find the most broken parts.  (They are obvious and
> easy to find right now. Then do a re-design using our knowledge of
> interface design etc, discuss it on the list etc.  Only after a decent
> design has been made, go test it and see how the users find it. Am I making
> sense?

I've brought this up a number of times and I think it needs repeating:

We really need to do "post analysis" on the changes that people DO make to the 
project.  It's the "What has changed, why we changed it, and what you should 
do in the future" list.

So if someone makes a change, they have to write a report about it that 
details what the UI looked like before, why it was bad, and how their changes 
are an improvement.  The report doesn't have to be long, but it should 
summarize the whys.  When we start to compile a long list of specific "Whys", 
we can begin to make generalizations.  This is essentially our "research" of 
usability.

-- 
-- Arcana  (Irwin)
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